A SIMPLE LIFE IN THE MAKING - HOMEMADE HAPPINESS 2 HANDFULS AT A TIME. Views from a small cottage in which I ramble into home gardens, living simply, heirloom skills and home made recipes, sustainable living, homesteads, naturalism, backyard chickens, politics, peak oil, economics, literature, ethics and life in general.

Friday, February 5, 2010

OKAY, SERIOUSLY – An 8 YEAR OLD – ON THE HIGH SECURITY RISK LIST SINCE HE WAS 2 YEARS OLD?

< < THE NEW FACE OF TERROR?How much more incompetent can homeland security be

So, after the Christmas underwear bomber, we learned that young Islamic men whose fathers have reported them as a likely threat can purchase one way tickets to America with cash, cross the Atlantic with no luggage and not be considered out of the ordinary. On the other hand, if you happen to have the same name as someone on the “list”, then you are considered a high risk traveler and must be individually scrutinized including a full physical search. You are subjected to this search despite the fact that you are an 8 year old American boy. More amusingly, you remain on that list despite the fact that they have been running you through this travesty numerous times, starting when you were 2 years old. There is no end to these searches, no matter how many times you are cleared. Apparently, Homeland Security does not learn from its mistakes, which is a shame, for if they did, they would be very wise indeed.

Yes the Transportation Security Administration has been making America save from Jihad for the last 7 years by frisking an American child, over and over again. Actually, the fun started when Michael was a baby, the family had to have the baby cleared by officials to get him a ticket to Florida to meet his grandparents. Baby Michael stayed on the list. The first time he was physically patted down, Mike was 2 years old. Apparently, he betrayed some underlying threat by having a suspicious emotional response to questioning. He cried - and he stayed on the list.

From his second year to his eighth, Michael has been the cause of long delays and been interviewed by supervisors all over the United States. This year, the family’s vacation took him out of the country. On the way to the Bahamas with his family, once again a tribunal was convened at the ticket counter. Michael was frisked. On the return flight back into the US, he was again frisked, this time even more aggressively. "Up your arms, down your arms, up your crotch — someone is patting your 8-year-old down like he’s a criminal," Mrs. Hicks recounted. "A terrorist can blow his underwear up and they don’t catch him. But my 8-year-old can’t walk through security without being frisked.".

"We can’t just throw a bunch of names on these lists and call it security," said House member William J. Pascrell Jr., D NJ. "If we can’t get an 8-year-old off the list, the whole list becomes suspect." The system is rife with examples like this, even Bob Hope, and Senator Edward Kennedy found themselves on a list and were subject to search and identity check. Is that all we have between us and weapons of mass destruction? a list?, no photofile?, no biographical data?, no profile like the FBI uses everyday to spot bank robbers and "right wing militia", no image scanning recognition software - no responce to new data? - in fact no signs of moderate intelligence what so ever? We expect to meet a deadly 21st century threat with a photocopied list of names handed out to day labor?

This is an average middle class family, no reason to assume them to be breeding suicide bombers. The mother, a photojournalist, was once cleared to travel aboard Air Force II with the Vice President. They have responded intelligently and calmly to each and every outrage. Each time filing a request to be cleared from the list, each time being ignored. With this history, the family wisely anticipated even more hassles following the Christmas attempted underwear bombing. The mother made every attempt to get her child back to the US without another frisking. Before leaving for the Bahamas on Jan. 2, she contacted her Congressional office. William J. Pascrell Jr., D NJ., Co made arrangement for a T.S.A. official to personally meet the family at the airport. However, no amount of diligence, preventive action, or clear thinking could prevent the T.S.A. from performing it’s ridiculous charade of securing the American skyways. Michael was given a thorough physical exam including full crotch pat down.

Perhaps, it has escaped the notice of many people, but every single time there has been an outside test or audit of the T.S.A.’s safety measures they have failed. Newspapers, the CIA, the FBI, internal T.S.A. audits - they have all failed - our security measure were easily and frequently evaded. Including one test which smuggled aboard items designed to register as nuclear materials. One last tidbit as to where the T.S.A. places its priorities: In the summer of 2002, less than one year after being founded, the T.S.A. held an annual meeting in Hawaii where bonuses up t0 100,000 were handed out along with “lifetime achievement awards”. Bonuses, you can chalk up to waste and greed, but “lifetime” achievement awards for an agency created the previous November?

So, let me add this to the picture we already have of Homeland Security. We know that rather that adopt any kind of profiling, that would properly focus screening, they insist on strictly random searches. That is, unless you fall on their list, which, by the way, apparently does not get revised no matter if your own dad calls and says you’re a terrorist threat or if your mom calls and says my little Mikey is only 2. They then match this timid politically correct approach to screening with a rather more vigorous response to actions on the plane. Specifically, although here on the ground, they see no reason to take their hands off a child’s crotch and go screen the nervous young Muslim chanting in the corner, they are perfectly willing to send a flight of F15s out to shoot the plane down after he seizes control, having smuggled a bomb onboard hidden inside his sacrosanct undies. Yes, we are willing to shoot down our own plane. All the innocent passengers will die in a fiery crash because T.S.A. agents were more interested in patting down an 8 year old American than to follow logical screening profiles that other nations use as a standard precaution.

Now, I understand I am not privy to Homeland Security secrets. Perhaps they know things I am not aware of. I suppose it is possible that the retirement homes of America are riddled with Al Qaeda agents luring our Viagra deluded elderly, into suicide bombings in hopes of their 60 virgins. Perhaps, the Finnish population of the upper great lakes is plotting secession and has joined the terrorist plot. Obviously, we cannot focus on young Saudi men when the threat from geriatric Finnish Americans goes untouched. Perhaps, as in the case of Michael Hicks, we are breeding a whole army of terrorists right here in our very own nursery schools. A village of the damned, where little children merely await Big Bird to pass on the imbedded password that will trigger their blind allegiance to Allah. The playgrounds of America will empty as our tots are sent out to detonate themselves in the midst of the infidel.

Well, I suppose, we can sleep quietly knowing that although most of our security is based solely on random luck, at least all the 8 year old American terrorists have had their crotches swept clean for explosives or box cutters. Although, it does leave open the question – have all T.S.A. screeners been background checked for pedophilia? Perhaps the Feds have secret information about a jihadist plot to turn under-roos into the next weapon of mass destruction? Oh hell, So much for sleeping quietly.

2 comments:

Last Tuesday, Directors of the CIA, FBI and National Intelligence declared that an attack by Al Qaeda in the next 3 to 6 months “is certain!” Leon Panetta, CIA Director announced, “The biggest threat is not so much that we face an attack like 9/11. It is that Al Qaeda is adapting its methods in ways that oftentimes make it difficult to detect.” Panetta’s statement does not take into account the ability to identify any terrorist whose goal it is to give up their life for a cause. Only when you are observing measurable emerging aggression can you identify a terrorist before they effect their violence.

The Center for Aggression Management discovered 15 years ago that there were two kinds of aggression: adrenaline-driven Primal Aggression and intent-driven Cognitive Aggression. The Primal Aggressor, in the extreme, is “red-faced and ready to explode,” the Cognitive Aggressor (the terrorist) is not. When a person, regardless of the culture, gender, education or position, rises to the level where their goal is to give up their life for a cause, their body looses animation and we see the “thousand-yard stare.” But it is more than this, the whole body and behavior looses animation and this is how we can identify them. The problem is that security and law enforcement are still looking for the Primal Aggressor (red-faced and ready to explode). Of course they are finding it difficult to detect these terrorist; a terrorist is a Cognitive Aggression; they are looking for the wrong person! You can read more at http://blog.AggressionManagement.com

Thank you very much for that responce John. You are very correct. One of the big problems with the American responce to Terror, is we continue to assume they are merely fringe nuts driven to insanity by too much praying. We need to recognize that there is a coherent underlying intention behind these acts.

Pinning that intention down may be difficult to do here, but we should realize that to a great many people the culture of America and its juggernaught export of that lifestyle represents a real threat to the culture they wish to live in.

Mind I am not saying that Islam's view of morality, authority, religion,women, etc is correct. But they are correct in seeing our culture as exporting ideas which are antithetical to their views.

We are in fact a threat to their way of life and so the people who respond can be driven not only with intent, but possibly a level of logic that is scarey to conceive. Treating the terrorist organizations as simple minded, blind zealots can be a serious mistake. The people they use as tools may be simple minded, but that does not preclude intent nor logic.